Our album of pictures from Bastar, more than 100 of them, can be seen through the following link:
Slept much better indeed felt good this morning. Got up in the sunshine, then took breakfast in garden.
Went to local village first, Kurandi village. Ged forgot to leave the key and Daisy forgot her proper walking shoes, but Shyamlal went back and forth to sort those things out.
We visited the junior school and then the middle school – lots of photos and pens.
The small children’s teacher organised a drawing competition and presented Daisy with the best pictures. Senior girls sang us “We Shall Overcome” in English.
Umesh helped Jolly to guide us .
Then through Jagdalpur (museum unexpectedly closed). And then on to the Chitrakote waterfall. Also saw flying foxes in a tree.
Struggled to find a picnic spot but eventually found one about 10 to 15 km shy of Jagdalpur.
Then into Jagdalpur where we bought some kutar and pyjama (shalwar and camise) plus some balls for the cricket and skipping rope and a multi point.
Then back to base for cricket in the garden, using tree stumps as stumps.
Three matches of five-a-side, five overs per innings. Lots of fun. Shyamlal screaming like a banshee. Daisy taking lots of pictures.
Ged Ladd batting and bowling well. Personal highlights included getting Jolly out caught and bowled and a classical drive through extra cover for four.
I tried to tighten or even lose the third match by promoting Abhishek in the batting and bowling but he turned out to be a star player as did Gowardhan.
Jungle Formula only helped a little bit at that hour.
A more comprehensive report on the cricket has appeared separately, not least as a link to the MTWD match report of the fixtures – click here or below:
Got ready for dinner and enjoy their meal in the open air restaurant – the centrepiece being duck, but perhaps the starturn was Raj (Sohit’s) Chinese style chicken soup.
A lovely day.
In addition to the Bastar album, linked above, there is a collection of over 200 photos from that part of the adventure that didn’t make the album, which can be seen at the link below:
Picture borrowed from Quandoo – click the pic to see that website.
Mum was especially keen on this Balham eatery towards the end of her time at Woodfield Avenue. It was conveniently close to the house too, so I would sometimes pick her up and take her to The French Cafe for dinner. This was one of those occasions.
8 September: Middlesex CCC Kit Sponsors Party
Daisy came along this time around – a rare visit to one of these parties by her. I seem to recall that the event had been especially good the year before and my report had triggered a “may I come to one of those?” question to which the answer was, “of course you may!”
I think this one was in the press bat of the old Warner Stand, if my memory serves me well.
I think this was the evening we spent quite a lot of time chatting with the late, lamented Derek “The Diamond” Britain and some members of his family. We also chatted with some of the players, nibbled at food and drank wine.
9 September: Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner
Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners had been going for just over 10 years by then. In fact, I missed the 10th anniversary one, in June. I am writing this soon after the 20th anniversary one was wiped out by the Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020.
The headline photo was circulated by John Random ahead of that June 2010 get together, which I missed. So I never discovered the context of the regal look. Perhaps John, feeling a little insecure, wanted to assert his authority with regard to our gathering.
Anyway. he was certainly in charge in September and circulated some more pictures and bants:
“The lovely Victoria”, as John describes her.
Many thanks to all those who came out to the Cafe Rouge on Thursday. If you weren’t there you were either sorely missed or we all slagged you off behind your back. No, seriously. We had a good turn-out, including – may I say – the Three Graces in the form of the lovely Harriet, the lovely Victoria and the lovely Jasmine, who is not only lovely but can show you all how to save up to 10% on Travelodge. Harriet came in her pyjamas. OK, with some pyjamas. In a bag. From La Senza. Anyway, it’s not often we have so many women come to the Ivan Shakespeares and I hope this trend continues.
Personal highlight of the evening, though was Keith Wickham reading out the scores to the quiz in the voice of James Mason.
Finally, Where Are They Now No. 127: Mark Flitton spotted on location in legal drama Silk playing the owner of a dangerous dog. Many of you will have fond memories of Mark in Noel’s wonderful Smoking Doctors sketch. He also went to Edinburgh for us and performed in both the Newsrevue show and Whoops Vicar.
Mark Flitton with John RandomColin Stutt
I do recall Keith Wickham’s James Mason impression that evening. I have always liked his James Mason, but there was something about Keith reading out the quiz scores in the style of James Mason that especially tickled me and I do remember giggling a lot. Perhaps it was the fourth glass of vino wot dunnit.
Anyway, as always a fun evening with the NewsRevue alums.
14 September: Middlesex CCC Forum & Party & The Robert Browning
I must be honest and admit that I remember very little about this particular forum and party, other than ending up at the Robert Browning Pub with Barmy Kev and others, where we continued the libations and played bar billiards until chucking out time.
Coincidentally, the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners were, for a while, held at the Robert Browning, until the inhospitable nature of the place (last orders for food were taken ridiculously early) drove us across the way to Cafe Rouge.
In 2010, mum would have been there, as would Michael and Dorothy, me, Janie, Hils and possibly some special guest stars, such as Jacquie’s grandson Josh. Mum might even have had a sleepover at Jacquie’s that year; I think she did that once or twice after dad and Len had died.
The 2010 spread would have looked much like the 2016 spread depicted. But the winner of the award that year has been lost in the mists of time.
Janie’s diary suggests that we had a gathering in Sandall Close with Kim, Micky, John, Mandy, Lydia & Bella, but I think that idea fell through in the end. We might have had Kim & Micky over for a casual supper, but possibly not even that happened in the end.
14 August 2010 – The Boundary With Anthea & Mitchell
We certainly did have dinner with Anthea & Mitchell the following week, at The Boundary. Janie remembers a superb platter of fish. Janie remembers that we took drinks after dinner on a rather splendid roof terrace. We both recall that all of us thought the place very good – indeed I thought it so good that we ended up booking it for Z/Yen’s Christmas party four months later.
I also remember that we enjoyed a lovely evening in the company of Anthea & Mitchell.
21 & 22 August 2010 – An Ironic Weekend Of Kinesiology
Janie did a weekend Kinesiology course with Lisa Opie. The irony comes from me forgetting to cancel our tennis court and therefore using the slots to try and teach myself how to serve left-handed.
Note to self: don’t overdo an extreme movement such as the tennis serve using a shoulder that you have never previously used for that purpose.
Suffice it to say, Janie got a lot of practice using her kinesio tape (other therapeutic taping methods are available) on me in the aftermath of her course and my excesses.
Forearmed is forewarned – a few months later in India strapped up for cricket
24 August 2010 – A Net With Charley the Gent, Then Dinner At Seventeen
It took a review of the e-mails to find evidence on this one. Here is Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s take on the evening:
I am a complete mess this morning i am so unfit. It was great to have the net but to get some real benefit from it i do need a better level of fitness. My bowling disappointed me, felt ok about my batting and tonking you around the park. Your bowling is better, well at least somewhere the the timbers, your batting well anyone could hit my bowling at the moment. I need a return, maybe october sometime? Thanks for the meal it was very good. Best to all Chas
The meal was in Seventeen, by Royal Oak. Still there and still well regarded nearly 10 years on as I write in April 2020 – at least it was pre-Covid. Strangely, I do recall the meal being good but I have never returned there. I guess I am spoiled for choice in Bayswater and it is normally just a tad off my beaten track.
28 August 2010 – Day Three England v Pakistan Lord’s Test
A birthday treat for me at Lord’s with Daisy. I believe we were in the Upper Edrich for this one or it might have been the Upper Compton.
The match had been weather affected the first two days, so England were still accumulating their first innings runs at the start of the day.
With grateful thanks to Dan Steed for the pictures
There could be a fierce debate among the Heavy Rollers as to whether this match qualifies as a Heavy Rollers event at all.
The match was scheduled to start on a Friday and half of Edgbaston was a building site for this match, so most of the rollers chose to absent themselves this year. Also, Anita was in hospital recovering from an op, so I think David & Dan were unable to join us the evening before the match.
Anyway, the Edgbaston party comprised four diehards: me, Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, David and Dan Steed.
Chas’s e-mail to me, cc: Dan & David after the event provides some evidence:
Just a quick note to all and thanks for a great day – so lucky with the weather.
Ian, special thanks for your generosity, so much appreciated, I will look for an Essex match within the next few weeks and also let you know about the face off at lords when I have that date!
David, Thanks fro taking us to the Hospital to see Anita, so pleased she is recovering well – keep me posted
Dan, don’t forget the link for the photos.
I will research the matches for next year. To include Edgbaston, Lords and the Oval, so far it looks to be India and Sri Lanka.
Regards
Charles.
PS – just thought I would mention it that I did say England needed 400 in the first innings, so not to bat again, its gets boring being so right so often!!
We stayed at Harborne Hall and my records show that my generosity extended to a meal at Henry Wong‘s on the night before the match – I think just me and Chas.
I recall that, before dinner, Chas and I visited Anita in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was brand new that summer. She was in good spirits while recuperating and was in superb spirits when we saw her again, in more convivial circumstances, the following year.
As for the cricket, I recall Edgbaston looking quite sad in its building-site-fulness and the Day One crowd was quite sparse.
We were in exile in the RES Wyatt Stand, some distance from our normal seats in the Priory Stand (subsequently a few blocks round in the Raglan Stand).
I also recall many locals (including Dan) griping about the prices that year – they felt that Warwickshire CCC had failed to notice the unattractiveness of this match in the circumstances and still tried to charge “Ashes prices”.
Not the best Pakistan performance we’ve ever seen
I’m not quite sure how Chas’s point about England scoring 400+ is vindicated by the ultimate scorecard, click here, but he must have known what he was talking about at the time.
Shilpa Patel, Alec Stewart, Michael Vaughan and Jonathan Agnew all furiously debating whatever it was that Charley the Gent might have been going on about.
Here’s the note from Dan in response to Charley’s note:
Few photos from the building site – didn’t take too many! The score board ones say it all really. Great day, apologies its taken me a few weeks to send.
Ian/Charles, Take care all and see you again next year at the Oval…….hopefully?!!
P.S. Ian, forgot to give you your Z/Yen cap back – if you need it let me know your address and I will post it?
I never got round to asking for my cap back. I wonder (in April 2020, nearly 10 years later) if it is too late to ask?
Another day of county championship cricket at Lord’s that needs a bit of explaining.
Michael Mainelli and I had formed a bit of a tradition that, each year, we’d spend a few hours at Lord’s watching first class cricket and chatting strategically/laterally/crazily about our business, Z/Yen.
In earlier years, before such sessions took place at Lord’s, we called them “Stiermerde sessions”, not that bullshit came into it…of course it didn’t. Once such sessions were at Lord’s, we called them “Stumpfmerde sessions” instead.
Michael must have enjoyed it because his e-mail that evening included:
Great Stumpfmerde and thank you…
My response included:
Indeed I have cleared my e-mails and shall down tools. But I couldn’t do so before scribbling and uploading today’s match report.
Very enjoyable day. And productive Stumpfmerdwise and bookwise too.
Oh, and you really did miss lots of excitement by leaving early – 6 wickets in the last hour, five of them to the youngster Toby Roland-Jones who is the product of your charming neighbour’s brother at the Middlesex Academy. What a happy coincidence!
I must say that it had completely escaped my memory that I witnessed that exceptional breakthrough performance by Toby Roland-Jones on a Stumpfmerde day – in my mind I would have completely separated the two events.
But I do remember the events of the 24 hours or so in question.
In those days, Vic Demain, now the head groundsman at Durham CCC, was the groundsman at Uxbridge. He would organise a charity party night during the county championship match to raise money for a good cause – breast cancer mostly.
This particular year, I was unable to attend the cricket on the day of the party, as it clashed with business meetings of such import I can barely bring myself to read the appointments for them in my diary without trembling.
So, I decided to hot-foot it to Uxbridge after my last meeting (in Kings Cross) and arranged for Daisy kindly to collect my weekend gear from the flat and take it to the house.
That way, I could commute to Uxbridge to the party, cab it to Daisy’s after the party, commute to Uxbridge the next day (Day Three, the Friday) and have Daisy join me for the conclusion of play and a lift home.
Simples.
I recall the charity party was a good one that year. I think I might have ended up with some Middlesex memorabilia and a lighter wallet, but that’s the idea of such things I suppose.
I also remember having terrible trouble meeting up with my minicab driver, as the gate I thought would work for my collection was locked and we struggled to work out how I might get out without walking for 10-15 minutes around the ground and adjacent fields. I think we ended up with me jumping the gate, in the style of the escape Daisy and I had made from Laos some years earlier:
But that Sunday idea fell through for lack of willing participants.
We had in any case planned to have a team bonding cricket session on Monday 19 July. We’d originally planned to play in Regent’s Park, but with that location unavailable we arranged for the match to be played at Z/Yen’s spiritual cricketing home, Holland Park. That facility got closed on us at the last minute, so the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, bless them, switched us to Kensington Memorial Park instead.
I’m not sure that the locals around Kensington Memorial Park had been informed that recreational cricket had been switched from Holland Park for a few weeks. Several of the locals let their unease with cricket be known to us in no uncertain terms during the evening.
Despite handling all of constantly moving goalposts regarding the logistics of this event, there’s no evidence that Monique Gore attended that evening, by which I mean there are no photographs from it. Monique’s attendance normally meant photographs.
Back then, if no-one was there with a camera (remember those) then you might not have any photographs to show.
The headline picture depicting Simon McMullen, one of the eventual winners, was taken the previous year.
If it’s summer that means there must be some sort of Z/Yen cricket match and 2010 was no exception. We decided to play a pairs tournament this year, which made sure that everyone got a go. Indeed, Xenia Mainelli was drafted in as a last minute replacement for her mother and came a close second – and who are we to judge whether her contribution or that of Louwrens was the key to that partnership’s success.
Chiara von Gunten, fresh over from Switzerland and experiencing cricket for the first time managed to take two wickets, which is quite an achievement.
Congratulations to the winners, Jacques Malan & Simon McMullen.
Rumours of match fixing at Z/Yen cricket matches are most certainly untrue, but we can confirm that the 2011 cricket match will be won by Ian Harris in partnership with Linda Cook.
Perceptive readers might have noticed that Simon’s picture was taken at the Lord’s academy, thus demonstrating that practice pays off. Indeed the photo was taken on the day that most of us Z/Yen folk played a practice game at the Lord’s academy, as witnessed by Garry Sobers, no less. Have I ever mentioned that before?
Paul Deacon, taken a few week’s earlier at England v Bangladesh
The Pakistan cricket team had just started their 10+ year sojourn following a terror incident in their homeland. England hosted a couple of neutral tests and I was keen to sample the delights at Lord’s.
To join me that day, Paul Deacon (this was to be his last hurrah of test cricket before he and his family went into self-imposed exile to Canada) along with Mat and Tim from the gym.
Paul clearly enjoyed himself at the neutral match but did not take (or at least did not post) any photos on the second visit. The headline picture and the one below are from the Bangladesh day.
But Paul did write this:
Hi Ian
just to say another big thank you for a fantastic day at Lord’s. Thoroughly enjoyed it. A nice tumble of wickets today!
Will fix a time for us + partners to meet up for a meal. Do you like Indian? Chinese? Thai? Or all 3 on one plate even?
Ahead of the impending Z/Yen cricket matches that season (which ended up being scaled back to a pairs tournament in Kensington Memorial Park), Steph Rochford was keen to have a go at the Lord’s academy and I was keen to encourage same.
Here is a summary from our extended correspondence a few weeks earlier:
At the moment it looks like you, me, Jez, Ben, Alex and little Si. Thanks, Steph
From: Ian Harris Sent: 07 June 2010 15:57 To: Stephanie Rochford Subject: RE: Cricket Nets?
Steph
Booked for the 6th – two nets and one coach.
Try not to overextend the numbers – 3 or 4 people in each net is the “sensible maximum” if everyone is going to get a decent go, so 6 to 8 for the two nets.
Don’t forget that you’ll need to sort out protective gear if you are going to have a go at keeping – helmet should be easy in any half-decent sports shop but “abdominal protectors” and the like for women cricketers are probably only available at shops that specialize in cricket quite a bit. Unlike the helmet (which you really do need to try on and make sure is right for you), you could probably get those other bits and pieces on the web. Keepers gloves and keepers pads we have in the Z/Yen kit.
Best
Ian
In the end I think it was about half-a-dozen of us in the nets and jolly good fun it was too. I think Steph might have abandoned her wicket-keeping ambitions quite quickly but I think she did sensibly procure an abdominal guard.
The other thing I remember very clearly about the evening was a gathering of about 10 of us in The Star – a now late lamented pub in St John’s Wood. Four or five Z/Yen people gathered there and were waiting for those of us from the cricketing party who fancied some libations after our net.
The soccer world cup was going on at the time. Alexandra Flynn, who has some Uruguayan extraction, was “put through the wringer” by Steph with regard to a controversial moment a few day’s earlier. At one point during her monologue, Steph, more or less without pausing for breath, said words to the effect of:
…oh my goodness I’ve just heard myself sounding off about this – I’d better stop right now…
…which came across to me as very self-aware, in a eureka moment sort of way. There was much myrth about that and indeed throughout the evening, which I remember fondly as a very pleasant few hours with the Z/Yen team.
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